Bagged—4 (fugitive craft & racket)

the last exposures of cursory incarnations

. . . continued from Bagged—3 (stasis) . . .

rackety: This popup from anywhere reads as a Red Roof Inn, spying a tiny Martin Mull asking if it’s “A Little Too Quiet In Here?” next to the tambourine.

	Daily decades gradually run their course, loading out of a shifty motel in the morning,

— campy harmony —

loading in for a shifty show, loading out at a shifty time, & then loading in for the night at the next shifty motel,

— unwinding in a smoking room with a pack of strings —

never not surrounded by equipment. 

Even traveling alone, there could still be a lot of gear — lumbars can attest. When the MD8 studio rides along in a Samsonite Sherbrooke, fleeting moments can be chased with a quick setup before sputtering out.

I've somehow gotten away with the hubbub.

crafty: between exits, paraprofessional cardboard & duct tape amp cases . . .

	I traveled as a guitar duo for a while. The other picker & I shared the homespun amp case bug. We'd meet up at the beginning of a run with our latest fabrications.

It wasn’t a showdown as much as a pageant. 

The musician was also a carpenter, so his designs were loaded with utilitarian frills like hinges. 

I was more focused on garnishes, such as racing stripes or foil tape faux metal trim from my ongoing collection.

The general construction worked great unless it was an oven in the windowless bedcap on the pickup truck we traveled in — the baked tape could get a little slippery until brought into the next air-conditioned motel room. 

There, the tape glue could solidify again, but with a slight deviation. By the end of a summer, the scrim-smeared designs were more of a collective meander, touched-up until retired eventually as distinctive, overall year-end warps of art. 

The Sherbrooke is still in service, but consigned to home confinement . . .

. . . while the bountiful universe continues with its intoxicating possibilities.

This series begins with Bagged—1 (reliquary).